Dialogue (Performance)

Dialogue ( Installation / Performance )

Artist: Xiao Lu

Performance Time: AM, 5 Feb. 1989

Location: National Art Museum, Beijing, China.

Material: Custom-made aluminum alloy telephoto booth, balck/white photograph, red telephoto handset, glass, mirror, concrete flags, handgun, bullets,small advertisement with traces of writing in ink, polypropylene adhesive. 

Exhibition: China/Avant-garde 

Director of the exhibition organizing committee: Gao Minglu 

Members of the exhibition organizing committee: Gan Yang, Zhang Yaojun, Liu Dong, Liu Xiaochun, Zhang Zuying, Li Xianting, Tang Qingnian, Yang Lihua, Zhou Yan, Fan Dian, Wang Mingxian, Kong Changan, Fei Dawei.

Exhibition Time: 5-19 February 1989

Photograph／Video offer: Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant-Garde Art

Performance Process

At about 11.10 am on 5 February 1989, during the opening ceremony of the China/Avant-garde Exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, being moved by inner psychological needs, I raised a gun and fired two shots at the installation work Dialogue where it was set up in the exhibition hall.

About "Dialogue"

The original idea of "Dialogue" stems from personal despair. The work shows a man and a woman making a call; the phone line hangs in the middle, proving the impossibility of such a dialogue. In this contradictory state of mind lies the original idea of the installation "Dialogue". The last gunshot was a roar out of suppressed emotions.

_ Xiao Lu